n's eternal welfare or to the glory of God. Why then should you
expect me to pen this kind of affidavit, which has no object but to
keep up a foolish partiality and secure a foolish bequest?"

"If you mean to hinder everybody from having money but saints and
evangelists, you must give up some profitable partnerships, that's all
I can say," Mr. Vincy burst out very bluntly. "It may be for the glory
of God, but it is not for the glory of the Middlemarch trade, that
Plymdale's house uses those blue and green dyes it gets from the
Brassing manufactory; they rot the silk, that's all I know about it.
Perhaps if other people knew so much of the profit went to the glory of
God, they might like it better. But I don't mind so much about that--I
could get up a pretty row, if I chose."

Mr. Bulstrode paused a little before he answered. "You pain me very
much by speaking in this way, Vincy. I do not expect you to understand
my grounds of action--it is not an easy thing even to thread a path for
principles in the intricacies of the world--still less to make the
thread clear for the careless and the scoffing. You must remember, if
you please, that I stretch my tolerance towards you as my wife's
brother, and that it little becomes you to complain of me as
withholding material help towards the worldly position of your family.
I must remind you that it is not your own prudence or judgment that has
enabled you to keep your place in the trade."

"Very likely not; but you have been no loser by my trade yet," said Mr.
Vincy, thoroughly nettled (a result which was seldom much retarded by
previous resolutions). "And when you married Harriet, I don't see how
you could expect that our families should not hang by the same nail.
If you've changed your mind, and want my family to come down in the
world, you'd better say so. I've never changed; I'm a plain Churchman
now, just as I used to be before doctrines came up. I take the world
as I find it, in trade and everything else. I'm contented to be no
worse than my neighbors. But if you want us to come down in the world,
say so. I shall know better what to do then."

"You talk unreasonably. Shall you come down in the world for want of
this letter about your son?"

"Well, whether or not, I consider it very unhandsome of you to refuse
it. Such doings may be lined with religion, but outside they have a
nasty, dog-in-the-manger look. You might as well slander Fred: it
comes pretty near